


These Dark Depths

by Marginson



Category: Black Sails
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 04, Reunion, some violent & bloody & religious imagery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-03-30 11:53:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marginson/pseuds/Marginson
Summary: Haunted by strange dreams and letters he never sent, John Silver walks through a lonely land in search of absolution.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prelude.  
> [Fic Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/toosmallmargin/playlist/3zHqVMm5KwfE9k5b7bvfbH?si=bU_VQyXVTkO6DdC9WhtZIg)

There is a hill, and upon it a man, and around it a desolate land.  
John Silver dreams.

A bird cries out above his head, its wings impossibly wide, casting a shadow that reaches the edges of the world. He starts walking and the sand under his feet shifts to wooden planks, to stone, to snow. To black earth.  
When he lifts his eyes the hill is closer, and the man standing on top is on fire. His own hands are on fire, although he feels neither pain nor heat. He stops to look at them, and the fire vanishes, only leaving the faintest scent of smoke in the air.

After a moment the bird cries out again, now circling the man on the hill, and Silver feels he should understand what that sound means, feels like the true meaning of it is in his mind somewhere, but he can’t reach it. He keeps walking towards the hill.  
He can’t quite make out its precise shape —  it twists and turns and reshapes like a mirage conjured by the sun except there is no sun ; only the hill, the man, and the desolate land.

A gust of wind sends him reeling and from his hands flies a flurry of pages that he does not remember holding before. They scatter in the sky, unreachable, until the man on the hill reaches out and grabs one with a burning hand.  
  
The paper does not catch fire.  
  
The man starts reading.  
  
Silver screams at him to stop, but no sound leaves his mouth.  
He starts running, only then realising that both of his legs are _whole_ , and his heart shatters and pulls itself back together in the same breath, because the hill is gone.

He whirls around in panic, looking for a trace of the man, the papers, _anything_.

 

  
The bird lands on his arm. From up close it looks smaller, its grey wings shorter and flecked with white. There are shiny specks of blood on its talons, and its beak is _dripping_.  
Silver watches, mesmerised, as heavy drops fall on his arm and seep through his shirt, his skin — his arm, flesh and bones and sinews and nerves ; as he feels the intruding blood insinuate itself in his veins, wracking his body with great heaving sobs.

He throws the bird a pleading look.  
Eyes like immense, unmoving pools of ink stare back at him, reaching through his skull and uncovering all his sins, and Silver stands, shivering and silent, until the smallest and most pitiful of his acts has been ripped apart and picked clean. He wants to beg for mercy, for relief, for absolution.  
  
Then it stops. The bird pecks at his shoulder gently, shakes itself and flies away.

John Silver dreams. The bird is just a bird.  
  
A veil lifts from his eyes and he can see a spot where the dark soil has been disturbed, a little further away. When he gets closer it becomes evident that a man was standing there, yet there are no tracks, no sign of anyone coming or going. There is a single page, half buried and stained under his feet.

He picks it up.  
The page is covered in his own writing, but the words are too small for him to read, lines and lines and lines stacked so tightly that the paper is almost black. He distantly remembers writing them, but for all his efforts he cannot make out a single word.  
  
The bird circles high above him with a long whistle that echoes, far and wide, filling the land. Silver thinks it might echo long after he’s dead and buried, and long after anyone who knew him is dead and buried, and the idea fills him with a quiet resignation.  
  
There is a desolate land, and a man, and the sudden sound of the ocean.  
John Silver wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Margin what the fuck is this ?  
> Well I am physically incapable of writing anything that isn't filled with vaguely ominous imagery, so.  
> [I'm also Marginson on tumblr](https://marginson.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Forest.  
> [Fic Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/toosmallmargin/playlist/3zHqVMm5KwfE9k5b7bvfbH?si=bU_VQyXVTkO6DdC9WhtZIg)

The woods are silent and it stopped snowing hours ago.  
Flint untangles the dead bird from his snare, hangs it over his shoulder and carefully resets the trap. He washes the trickle of blood on his fingers in the snow, puts his gloves back on and sets off.  
  
It’s still early in the afternoon, but the sun is low this time of the year and the light dim between the trees. The hills are bathed in a thin fog that curls about his ankles as he moves. He walks slowly, the snow soft under his boots, taking in the crisp air with long, even breaths. The cold stings his face and his lungs but it is a cleansing sort of pain — neat and numbing, and for a moment he feels content.

The hushed sound of the river grows closer, and he keeps it to his right to head north.  
  
He takes the long way home, climbing over rocky promontories and beyond a small cascade to avoid the bear den he stumbled upon downriver a few months back. He suspects the bear had cubs this winter and although the season is only about to turn, he would prefer not to get between her and her youngs when she decides to come out.  
  
The river is still frozen in places, covered in wide shards lazily fracturing under the sun. Flint stops for a while to rest, and lets his eyes wander over the dark water. Shadows ripple under the surface, and the sun drapes them with specks of gold.

However wild and inhospitable this place is, there is no violence and deceptions in the unchanging forest — only the flow of time, the predictable chase of preys and predators, and the promise of oblivion.

He thinks of a different shore, awash in sunlight and voices and the acrid tang of gunpowder.  
  
He readjusts the rifle slung over his shoulder and steps on the ice.  
As slow and careful as he is, it moans dangerously as he crosses. In a week, two at most, he will have to patch up the boat before taking it out again.  
  
When he reaches the opposite side a sudden flurry of movement catches his eye and he turns, brushing away the damp hair that has fallen over his eyes. A couple of small birds fly over his head with high-pitched cries, but he sees nothing else moving.

The woods are still silent.  
He spots strange tracks in the snow a little further along the bank.

 

* * *

 

  
James Flint is not a very impressionable man. Even in the last few years, in all the encounters he’s had in the wild with beasts, the French, or the occasional over-enthusiastic young hunter from the nearby native tribes, he can count on a single hand the number of times he’s truly felt in danger.  
And yet.

  
This time something whispers in his ear not to follow the tracks, even as they turn east under the pines, and towards his cabin. They don’t belong to any animal, and the few visitors he has all come from the valley path, not the river.  
  
He reaches for the handle of the hunting knife at his waist, unsheathes it. The weight of the blade and the worn wood in his palm ground him, make him stand straighter. His body remembers, perhaps too well for his taste, how to handle a threat — and it has proved useful time and again, but that brings him no pride or joy.

  
He exhales, throws a quick look around him, and takes cover under the trees to follow the trail.  
  
The tracks are muddy and deep, betraying a laborious trek, and the displaced snow makes them hard to read. The scouts dispatched by the French in the area know better than to approach his home, and they usually are lighter-footed — still he cannot discard the possibility.

  
He hears nothing but the wind picking up and his own laboured breathing as he stalks through the woods as silently as his frantic heart will allow.  
_Thomas isn’t home_ , he has to remind himself to stop from going blind with fear. _Thomas is in Boston, Thomas is safe, and he won’t be back for a few weeks._

His head pounds and his knees ache by the time he gets to the clearing.

The sunlight reflected by the snow hurts his eyes.

  
He doesn’t know what he expected. Maybe he feared he would find the house burning like a torch, collapsing under its own weight, turning to dust and ashes and taking the remains of his attempts at normalcy with it. Maybe he feared he would walk into a two-man battlefield, his opponent waiting gun drawn for him to leave the treeline.

 

* * *

 

  
Maybe that would have been a more merciful outcome.

As it is, he merely finds John Silver standing in the middle of the clearing, his bulky frame wrapped in matted furs, his skin impossibly dark against the white of the snow, staring straight at him, and with no gun in sight.

Flint’s grip on the knife handle gets almost painful.

Silver does not move an inch.  
  
He is not sure who looks more afraid between the two of them.

  
Silver’s eyes look feral and wide, shifting over Flint’s face as if trying to decide in which direction to run. There is snow melting in his hair, and streaks of dirt on his face. He looks about to drop from exhaustion. He looks about to vanish into the wind.  
  
Flint feels the instinct to move, pressing and urgent — to lunge and strike and _hack._ It’s both unfamiliar and exhilarating, like opening an unfinished book and plunging back into the story as if he never stopped reading it. His veins are alight with a delicious fury, waking parts of him that have been slumbering for far too long.

The blade in his hands is a live thing and it sings, sings, _sings_ .

Silver looks at him, and his tired eyes burn a gaping hole in Flint’s skull.

There is no name for this. Flint has forgotten what words even are.  
No one is there to restrain him, no one is there to witness this, _no one who ever needs to know_.

They are on the fringe of the world, in one of these places that do not quite exist alongside the rest of it, the kind of place where animals go to die and men come to hide unspeakable things.  
Again.

 _  
_ Flint’s anger abates like a passing storm when Silver closes his eyes and smiles, something so small and so out of place that Flint feels he just got punched in the gut. A great black thing latches onto the inside of his ribs.

There is silence, and the whisper of the wind.

 _Who are you._  
  
  
Neither of them has moved, still, and for the first time in a long while he does not trust his voice to get him out of this situation — so he tears his eyes away from the man, who stays maddeningly silent, and stares at the cabin as he marches forward, climbs the few steps leading up to the deck, and pushes the door open with more force than is strictly necessary.  
It’s a small mercy that he does not collapse right there and then.

 

* * *

 

 

Flint has gone through fire and battle, through hunger and storms, through men and their violence, and he is still standing. But this — whatever outcome this brings — he’s not entirely sure he can weather.

  
He hears a muffled sound coming from outside, and that is almost enough to make him turn, but instead he busies himself with putting the dead bird and his hunting gear away. He hangs the rifle on the wall. The knife ends up stuck into the table.

By some miracle he doesn’t rip his gloves while taking them off. He stokes the fire and it roars back to life, bright and crackling, warming the hearth and soothing his skin.  
He stands over it, rubbing his restless hands together, as if watching the flames could banish the vision of a ghost waiting for him in the snow.  
  
  
It takes longer than he expected for Silver to walk in through the still open door.

Well, stumble in would be closer to the truth.  
  
Flint has no idea how long he’s been walking, or from where exactly, but even the valley path is unforgiving in the winter months and the madman came _alone_. On a _crutch_.  
  
He steps away from the fire. Silver watches him warily before accepting the unspoken invitation and falling to his knees in front of it, discarding his furs and letting out a breathy gasp of relief. For a moment he leans into the fire and his face goes slack, seeming to have forgotten Flint entirely. The bone-deep, glacial, vicious ache of Silver’s body is all too obvious.  
  
Flint watches him silently from a corner of the room, and tries to remember a time when the world made any sense. The knife taunts him from the edge of his vision.  
  
Behind the wall he’s leaning on, on a narrow wooden desk, there is a stack of letters. Worn and faded by time, and the elements, and the long twisting paths they have had to take to get to there. Some are incomplete, some comprised of only a few words, some written in such a rush that they are almost illegible.

  
Flint recalls the words, and attempts to reconcile them with the reality of the man in front of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are we really 2k+ words in and they still haven't spoken a word to each other ? It's because emotions are hard, my dudes.  
> [I'm also Marginson on tumblr](https://marginson.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A stack of letters.  
> [Fic Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/toosmallmargin/playlist/3zHqVMm5KwfE9k5b7bvfbH?si=bU_VQyXVTkO6DdC9WhtZIg)

Captain,

  
For some reason I had to wait until winter to write to you.

  
Somehow my memories are more vivid in the sun ; and in the colder days I have to make more efforts to remember your voice.

Perhaps I could not write before because you were in my head still, and any time I picked up a quill I heard you laughing at me from somewhere over my shoulder.

I never did like writing — I cannot pause, I cannot raise my voice, I cannot look you in the eye and feed you lies with a carefully chosen tone. I cannot watch, or listen, or try to divine your thoughts, so that I may say what you need to hear.  
Writing is too brutally honest for how incomplete it feels. It’s like going into battle without any of my weapons, or a plan, or you at my side.  
  
Perhaps I now feel the need to write to stop what I remember from slipping away from me —  perhaps if I write enough, and well, and true, eventually I will go back to being just a man.

 

Perhaps if I journey north, the wind will stop carrying your orders, and the water will stop reflecting your eyes, and I can find a place where the sun doesn’t burn.

* * *

 

Captain,

Forgiveness was not made for the likes of me, so I’ve always thought—

 

* * *

 

Captain,

  
I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep for the image of you, for the absence of you —  I lay awake in the dark with my entire life raging inside my head and the echo of _you are not there, you are not there, you are not there_

And you would think your absence would just be an immense emptiness but it’s not - it’s a violent, aggressive thing. It’s always in my face. It’s following me everywhere. Every person I talk to is so far from matching you that I would kill just to shut them up.

 

Every place I go is so quiet and foreign without your presence that I fucking want to burn it all down.

 

The world is empty of the fighting you conjured in it and I was blind to the fact that it was the only thing keeping me standing.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

 

I've been having this dream of you as an angel covered in teeth and fangs. You kneel in the shallow water at the edge of a beach, and you break my neck with great care so that I may ascend to heaven.

 

* * *

 

 

Captain,

  
You were right, Christ —  you were right. It’s never enough.

  
It never was enough for Madi either. I think your absence caught up with her more quickly than it did with me, and I think she is far braver than I.   
  
I tried — goddamnit I am still trying — to move forward in the direction I chose for both of us, and to make it good for her. I believed that giving her all of what I am would suffice.

  
But you knew her, didn’t you. Some parts of her you knew better than I ever did, or that she ever did —  there is a resolve in her that you recognised, because you had seen it in yourself before. 

Now that you are not there, she has to wield that power alone.

I wasn’t made like you or her.

  
How did I ever think anything I did could prevent her from taking up that mantle ?

Even with everything lost and buried she somehow finds the will to start over and fight again.  
  
How many times have I seen you do the same ?

* * *

 

Captain,

  
Emptiness would have been enough. I suppose I was not deserving of it.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

 

Some days I felt I got caught in a terrible storm and it turned me into a wreck at your mercy.

But that’s not what happened, was it. I walked willingly into the storm to become part of it — and then I raged and I fought when the storm would not let me go.

  
How could you —  how was I supposed to bear it for you ; having known such great heights and fallen into such a terrifying abyss ?

 

* * *

 

Captain,

  
Madi set sail again today.

She has been away more often than not, lately, and she always comes back — but I am not certain she will for much longer. The routes she takes and the allies she visits take her further and further, and soon I will be too far removed from her fights to warrant a regular trip back.

  
The first time she went I asked to go with her, and she obliged.

I almost wept at the things she had to do. At how she shouldered all of it with such grace and with such cold determination.

At the person she has had to become because I forced her hand, not thinking the result of what I’ve done to her would be the same as what was once done to you.  
  
I realise I should have wept for you.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

  
My mind is silent today but the east wind is deafening.

When I was on Madi’s ship, it took days before I stopped hearing your voice on deck.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

Writing into the void might not be so bad, after all. It still tears too-sharp truths out of me — but at least it keeps them tame and quiet, trapped on paper.  
They are not spoken, and you will never know the shape of them, but this way they seem to belong a little less to me alone.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

 

I don’t know why I keep calling you that. There is no ship. There is no crew. There is no wind to corral to take us anywhere.

  
Madi told me of a song she heard while on the coast of Jamaica a few weeks back. Something about a lamb, God’s eternal damnation, and Calico Jack Rackham.

I don’t remember the words, but it did not end well for the lamb. I sincerely hope the old bastard has heard it. Hell, he may well have written it himself.

 

There is nothing to our legacies but our names, is there ?  
  
If you are not _Captain_ , then there is nothing left of me.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

  
There was a curious package sitting on my table this morning. Stuffed with some peculiar pamphlets printed in Boston. Madi wouldn’t tell me where she got it, or why she gave it to me.

But she smiled, and I felt that she entrusted me with something.

 

I thought she would never trust me again, and I had devoted what remains of my life to changing that, somehow.

  
I think she might have beaten me to it.

 

* * *

 

Captain,

 

_Flint,_

 

— fuck this.

* * *

 

 _I shouldn’t write to you_ nothing is worth writing if I can’t yell it at your fucking face—  

 

* * *

 

James,

Forgiveness was not made for the likes of me, and I have always told myself I did not care for it.  
  
But if you were to give it to me now, I could let you throw me bound and chained into the fucking ocean

 

* * *

 

James,

 

* * *

 

James,

 

 

 

* * *

 

James,

  
You stood on a hill in my dream last night with vultures circling around you.  
They were diving again and again to rip you apart. I could not move. I wasn’t even truly _there_. You looked half a martyr and half a King, and I feared I would be turned to stone if I looked at you for too long.

  
Your eyes… _Christ_ , your eyes were dead.

 

* * *

 

James,  
I am not sure if we are of this world, exactly — we dissociate between our minds and the reality of life so often that I have to wonder where it is we actually exist.

 

For a while now I have been trying to pinpoint when your reality became mine. When I committed myself to what you saw.

I don’t think I’ll ever know — you were always far too good a blending everything together.

 

* * *

 

Your arms, open and drenched in blood—

 

* * *

 

do you know you _warped_ me

 

* * *

 

James,

 

In my latest dream you faced God and, finding him lacking, you took the crown of thorns off his son’s corpse and wore it for your own.

And God let you.

 

* * *

 

That’s the question. That’s the heart of the problem. If I can’t scream that you were the only thing that mattered, what’s _the point_

 

* * *

 

James,

 

Around you everything _ends._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John Silver has been through some shit, okay ?  
> [I'm also Marginson on tumblr](https://marginson.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A room.

 

“Are you hurt ?” Is the first thing Flint manages to say, after what seems like hours of silence.  
  
Silver does not open his eyes. He only shakes his head, very slowly.  
Then it hits Flint that these might not have been the best words to say to a man who voluntarily put years of distance between them. He only thought to make sure that Silver was not physically injured, but.  


_Hurt_ is a pale word for what they have done to each other.  
  
There is a bitter taste in his mouth.  


Silver rises then, leaning on his crutch and throwing his wet furs over the back of the nearest chair. In the dimming light of the afternoon he still doesn’t look completely real, his dark hair melting into the shadows of the room. What Flint can see of his face looks a little less ashen, a little more alive — but the cold seems to linger in his limbs.  
He looks at Flint, and his eyes are calm, but they have the same spark of animal panic around the edges as before.

“I am fine,” he exhales. “Do you mind…?” he asks, with an apologetic gesture towards the chair.  
  
Flint’s throat is too tightly wound to answer, still, so he just nods. Silver sits down with a sigh that he tries to suppress, but it still rings in Flint’s ears.  
He turns and walks into the bedroom, merciful for the temporary safety that it presents, and tries not to look at his desk as he fetches a blanket from the foot of the bed. He pauses, for just a second, swaying at the very end of a very steep cliff.

Silver stares absently at the blanket when he hands it to him, but eventually takes it and drapes it around his shoulders with an appreciative groan.  
  
“Thank you,” he says, his voice low and hoarse ; his eyes stay fixed on the edge of the wool between his fingers.

The cream fabric stands out against Silver’s skin, tanned and grimy from the road. Flint watches, breathless, as he stretches out his legs ; as his hair spills wet and heavy around his neck.

Maybe this moment has been long overdue. It certainly feels like it — but the vision of Long John Silver sitting quietly at his dining table, wrapped in a soft blanket, seems too mundane for what it actually is. The light seems too grey, and the fire too weak. The faint scents of smoke and sweat seem too profane ; something like this calls for myrrh and frankincense.  
  
Flint had never seen Judas Iscariot clothed in the colour of angels before.  
  
John _Silver.  
_ The irony is not entirely lost on him.

 

* * *

  
  
There is something pulling at him from behind his breastbone, a tidal wave tossing around the sand in his veins.

It’s nothing, only Silver’s hands tapping away at the edge of the table as if he has forgotten how to exist in a room without violence.  
Flint shivers at the thought.

  
“What day is it ?” Silver asks. Then, seeing Flint’s raised eyebrow, he continues. “The past couple of months have been… hectic, to say the least. Is it… is it Tuesday ?”

“Monday.”  
  
“Monday.”

 

Flint sits down, carefully, on the opposite edge of the table. He looks at Silver, really looks at him ; as if meeting a stranger for the first time. The tremor of his hands. The sun on his skin. The lines on his forehead.  
He looks suspiciously like he is working up a fever. There is a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, like the one Flint saw outside earlier. But there is no joy in it ; something closer to relief, perhaps.

“How did you know to come here,” he asks, his voice even.

And had Silver been any other man, Flint would have pried that answer from him as he lay dying in a pool of his own blood, and buried him along with the secret in the darkest part of the woods.

He suspects that the truth may be more dangerous than just someone having discovered where he has been hiding. A restless musician keeps plucking away at the same three notes, over and over, somewhere in his mind.

Silver meets his eye.  
  
“Thomas,” he says.

“Liar.”  
  
Silver has the gall to sigh.  
  
“Well, that didn’t take you long.”  
  
“There is no way in hell Thomas would have let _you_ know about this place,” Flint grits through his teeth, and the contempt in his tone should not feel so pleasant.

 “Yes, that’s exactly what he told me when I first asked.”

 “How dare you —”

Silver raises a hand in surrender, placating Flint enough that he sits back down. He swallows back the flames that lick around his teeth and threaten to spread to his entire body, devouring him, and the room, and the cursed husk of John Silver with it.

_Who gave this man so much power_

Wordlessly, Silver reaches under the blanket and into his jacket. Flint eyes his knife, stuck in the wood, still within reach.

It proves unnecessary, however, when Silver only produces a small letter that he slides across the table. It’s sealed, the wax unbroken.  
Flint lets out a shaky breath.  
  
“I have no idea what he wrote. But he did tell me where to deliver it.”  
  
Flint throws him a hard look before taking the letter and opening it. Silver waits, his mouth slightly open, suddenly looking very unsure of himself. The letter is extremely short, but deliberately worded, and Thomas’ handwriting is unmistakable. It’s dated from a day two weeks earlier.

It’s not addressed to him.

 

* * *

 

  
_My dearest Miranda,_ _  
_  
_I will be home on time. Please put some order in our affairs before then._

 _  
_ _Trust me._

 _  
_ _T.H._

 

* * *

   
For a few precious moments Flint does not care that he is not alone in the room, letting his face go soft as he takes in the words.

 _My dearest Miranda_ , however painful the memories that the words drag to the surface of his mind are, is their mutual code for _everything is fine_. Thomas might as well have written _put the gun down, James_ — and Flint hates himself for how clearly he can hear the appeasing tone of his voice.

They should not need this kind of precautions. Half-words, half-truths, hidden meanings and false names. Having to double-guess Thomas’ intent. Having to imagine his voice.  
  
They should never have needed it.

As he glances back at the man in front of him he cannot help but notice that Thomas did not write _trust John Silver_ , and that he only gave him a cryptic letter to deliver.  
He knows that Thomas was in no immediate danger. As for what exactly he is asking him to do before he comes back, Flint can only guess.

 

Silver shifts in his seat, readjusts the blanket around himself. There is dust dancing in the air, the low howl of the wind against the windowpane, and his cracked fingers moving again to beat a steady rhythm on the wooden table. It echoes, persistent and languid along Flint’s spine, a mad clock ticking away the seconds until he flies apart.  
  
He folds the letter, sets it back on the table.  
What he wants to ask cannot be contained neatly in a single sentence.

“How long did you spend with him ?” is what he decides on.

 _What did he tell you_ is what he means. _How did you find out where he was._

 _How did he look at you. How tired were his eyes. Did you see how bright he burns. What book was he reading. How late did he stay up talking to you. Which one of his editors was he frustrated with. Did he laugh when he wrote this letter._ _Did you laugh with him. How high was the pile of papers on his desk._

_How long has his hair gotten_

_What did his voice sound like when he said my name_  


_Did you understand_

_  
Do you understand_

 

And of course — of course. He does not need to say any of that. Silver knows. He has to know, because he used it to break Flint.

He has to know, because he met Thomas, and Thomas decided to send him here, and why would he trust such a dangerous man with his most vital secret unless he thought Silver could _understand_ ?  
Flint thinks of Madi. What he gathered from Silver’s letters and what Silver did to get her back when he thought her lost.

What she did for Silver.

Of course Silver _understands_.

That does nothing to reassure Flint. If anything, it makes him more vulnerable — and that is not something he wants to be when facing the man.

“A week,” Silver says, interrupting his thoughts. “I would’ve come sooner, but I had to wait until the snowstorm passed.”

 

_What is a week after years of time and space_

 

  
“Why come at all ?” Flint answers, his voice rasping, his mouth contorting in a dry smile, and Silver flinches.

His hands are frozen on the wood, now, but the echo still scrapes at Flint’s spine. It awakens a dormant creature that stretches in his limbs and expands in his lungs — sharp, and golden, and righteous.

 

* * *

 

And in a blind rush he steps around the table, grabs Silver’s wrist, makes him stand.  
  
Silver goes willingly, pliantly — but his eyes are hard, fixed on the wall behind Flint’s shoulder. The blanket slides from his arms and pools around his feet, crumpled and insignificant. Flint stares at a man he cannot make sense of.

A man who crossed half an ocean so he could stand here and refuse to look at him. A man who discarded his trust and paid for him to vanish into oblivion. A man who confessed his sins on page after page after page and _never fucking sent them_.

 He is distantly aware of Silver’s pulse scorching indelible marks on the inside of his palm. Flint was never the sort of man who runs from fights.

“Is it forgiveness you want ?”

“I do not want anything,” Silver spits and finally looks back, full of unexpected defiance.

And Flint knows it’s a lie, but he wonders if Silver himself is aware of that.

  
“That’s good, because I have no forgiveness to give.”

“I know,” Silver says, in a voice that is strangely void of any emotion.  
  
  
_Then why come all this way_  
 

“It doesn’t matter, though.”

  
Silver frowns, then, and the mask of calm slips from his eyes for a second. Flint has so rarely seen him out of his depth in their conversations that he almost misses it ; but there it is — John Silver not knowing where someone is leading him.

“Madi sent me your letters,” Flint says simply.

Silver recoils at that, wrenching his arm from his grip and stumbling backwards until his back hits the wall.

His breathing is ragged and his teeth are bared.

Flint expected something like this, but it isn’t any less painful now that one of them dared to speak some fucking truth.

 

True to form, John Silver recovers quickly when threatened.

“I should never have written them.”

“Really ? I found them rather informative.”   
  
“You were never meant to—”

“But I did.”

 

Flint’s words sound final, too brutal even to his own ears. There’s a man who has just been exposed against his will. There’s a man who walked behind enemy lines to discuss peace and finds himself being flayed alive.

Flint should show some mercy.

But.

The look of pure grief on Silver’s face feels _earned_ .  
  
And it feels honest.  
Flint still cannot figure him out, but he can get some pieces of what he is owed.

“The letters change nothing,” Silver says suddenly, composing himself. He stands a little straighter, raising his chin. “I never intended them to.”

“Have you actually forgotten what you fucking wrote ?”

“I still _sold you_.”

 

Silver’s voice breaks on the words, and it’s something that can never be repaired.  
  
Flint feels like he is being stabbed.

He wishes Thomas were there. He wishes Miranda were there. He was never good at navigating this sort of things, unless it involved burning cities to the ground.  
He lets out a shaky breath, opens his eyes — tries to remember when he closed them.

Silver is looking at him. Open, and defenceless. All semblance of defiance dropped. His throat bare.

His hands empty.

 

_So you decided to walk into the beast’s lair_

 

Something unfurls in Flint’s mind, shaky and frightening.

Silver stands alone, with no blade at his side and no pistol on his belt — with no trace of even the smallest blade tucked in his boot.

Flin takes a step towards him. Then another, and another, until he can fist a hand into the fabric of Silver’s shirt and hold him there. The man does not move an inch. He keeps staring at Flint, silent, unbearably unguarded, with no fight left in him.  
  
  
_Why would you march yourself off to slaughter_

  
  
“What the fuck did you think ?!” Flint hisses and he has to stop himself from shaking Silver, has to steady his voice and his hands, because now is not the time to play into whatever scenario the man has in mind. “Did you imagine I would… what exactly ? Exact some sort of bloody revenge on you ?”

Silver closes his eyes with a painful intake of breath. Flint wants to press a hand to his forehead to smooth out the sharp lines there.

  
_Did you actually believe you deserved it_  
  
  
He stops himself, fearing Silver would take it as an invitation and bare more of his throat hoping to get it ripped to shreds.

 

_Do you know how long I have kept these letters pressed to my heart_

   
  
“John,” he says, and his voice is the most wretched thing he’s ever heard, “Listen to me.”

When Silver does not react he pulls at the fabric of his shirt — to startle him ; to pull him out of the waves ;  to get him off the wall.  
Then he lets go. The sun has sunk behind the trees and the room is shrouded in darkness.

  

John Silver looks up. Flint steels himself.  
  
“You have _nothing to fear from me_.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...well that was... something...  
> [I'm also Marginson on tumblr](https://marginson.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Days.
> 
> [I'm also Marginson on tumblr](https://marginson.tumblr.com/)

Silver does not rush out the door, per se, although for an exhausted man walking with a crutch he does make a valiant effort.  
  
The door does not slam shut but eventually it closes, very lightly and very quietly, over Flint’s shadow.

 

For a moment he stands there, looking at the wood as if he could make it catch fire with his mind - but suddenly the air feels too still and his own skin too tense and he needs to run, move, _do something_.

His eyes fall on the knife, and he feels a flash of guilt at the sight of the deep gash it leaves on the wood of the table when he snatches it. He remembers polishing the table with a touch of wax, a few years back, with Thomas softly humming to himself in the other room as he patched a window. The table is simple and sturdy, with rounded edges on all its legs. Thomas had laughed, fond and a little sad, when James had explained why.

It’s the first thing he built for this place —  the first thing he had built in a very long time —  and aside from a long stain of spilled ink that seeped into the grain one memorable evening, they had managed to keep it pristine so far.

 

He ought to be angrier about the gash than he is, but it’s hardly the first scar he has inflicted himself because of John Silver.

Flint sheathes the knife and unbuckles his belt to hang it next to the rifle. Mindlessly he goes to stoke the fire, and thinks on starting to clean the bird, or on indulging in a hot bath. He thinks of going to bed, and letting sleep wash away his weariness.

There is no sound from outside.

So he picks up the blanket, shakes it, folds it over his arm, and steps through the door.

 

* * *

 

Silver is standing at the top of the stairs, staring at the sky.

His knuckles are white where they clench too hard around the handle of his crutch, and the wind is tugging restlessly at his hair, but he does not seem to mind. He stays still when Flint approaches him, so Flint does not say anything about the streaks of tears that are starting to wash the grime off his face.

Silver’s eyes seem to blend with the sky, grey and liquid and murky with the last dregs of winter.

Flint unfolds the blanket and drapes it over Silver’s shoulders with hands that are almost steady.

“Please come sit by the fire,” he says, startled by his own voice. “You’ve been out in the cold long enough.”

Silver looks at him over his shoulder, then, the dark hollows under his eyes standing out more sharply in the last moments of sunlight.

Flint turns to walk back inside, and Silver follows him.

 

* * *

 

By the time Flint has heated up some soup and served them both generous slices of bread, Silver is almost asleep, slouched against the mantelpiece. He blinks up lazily at Flint when he touches his arm to get his attention, and takes the offered bowl with a small nod.

The tears have dried on his cheeks, but his eyes are still unsure.

Flint drags another chair to sit on the other side of the fireplace, and they eat in silence.

He thinks of the first time he tasted Silver’s cooking. He thinks of the first time Silver managed to cook anything actually edible. He thinks of the last meal Silver prepared for the crew, and the first speech he gave them as Quartermaster. He thinks of how, one way or the other, this man had always made it his role to feed the people around him - with meat, or lies, or faith.

 

Flint thinks of a lot of things. Flint thinks of nothing.

“There’s soap and clean water in the other room,” he says after they are both finished, pointing at the door next to the bedroom. “I can heat up some if you like, but I don’t think I have the energy to fill up the tub.”

Silver chuckles and it feels like pure, blissful ice spreading through Flint’s veins. It’s a wonder to him that he is even allowed — this. Any of this. Part of him recognises a man he knew once, while his spine keeps murmuring that if he were really Long John Silver then Flint should be outside, digging a shallow grave in the woods with blood drying in his hair.  
  
“Don’t bother. I would just fall asleep in there anyway,” Silver says.

 

* * *

 

While Silver drags himself away from the fire and to the other room, Flint puts away the bowls and gets a set of clean clothes from the chest at the foot of his bed, figuring that dishes, like conversations, are a concern for some other day.

He sets down the clothes on the floor next to the door and knocks twice to let Silver know.

  
“Leave your things by the tub, I’ll clean them tomorrow,” he says, and gets a quiet hum in response.

  
Skeleton Island seems very far away.

He gets to work piling up furs and blankets to make himself a somewhat comfortable bed by the fire, washes his face and his hands in the kitchen, slides off his boots and lies down. Outside the wind is still howling, and it is rather early for him to go to bed — but he does not feel that he could concentrate on even one of his most beloved books at the moment. He closes his eyes.

There is the lively crackling of the fire, and the hushed sounds of water and clinking porcelain in the other room.

After a while he can hear Silver retrieving the clothes and putting them on, then the rasp of his crutch against the floor as he steps out, then silence as he hesitates for a long moment before heading into the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

Flint curls up closer to the fire and allows his body to soak in the warmth.

 

* * *

 

Silver sleeps through most of the next day.

He does not wake at the noise Flint makes as he goes about his day - the clattering of the dishes and the frustrated curses he lets out while trying to get days of encrusted dirt out of Silver’s clothes.

There is no blood anywhere on them, though - a small mercy on both his tired hands and his tired mind.

He tries to remember the number of times Miranda had to drag him up from the floor and clean up his bloody shirts, and he feels like he never apologised to her enough. She would probably laugh if she saw him like this, elbows-deep in muddy, soapy water - laugh and sit by him to instruct him how to best get ash out of linen.

 

There is a terrible imprint on his soul in the shape of her.

 

When he’s done he hangs the clothes to dry by the fire, and as he goes to empty the tub he notices the rings Silver left on the windowsill.

They’re battered and blackened, dented and bent in places. He picks up one - its glints faintly in the morning light, the worn metal soft under his fingers. The make looks Spanish, somehow both elegantly crafted and heavy enough to crack bones on the hand of a pirate king.

He sets the ring down. There are four of them, forlorn and out of place, like relics on the windowsill of his cabin in the middle of the forest.

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Silver emerges from the bedroom, with a weary sigh but certainly looking far more alive than he did the day before, Flint is drinking his afternoon whisky, sprawled in a chair by the west-facing window with a book in his lap. The dishes are done, the bird he caught plucked, seasoned and simmering in a cast-iron pot, and the muddy tracks they left on the floor wiped away.

He even found time to chop some wood behind the house, the muscles between his shoulders burning sharply as he swung the axe, his elbows going numb, and his mind going blank.

Silver looks at him as if he had never seen him reading a book before. He takes a step towards him, something urgent in his posture.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he starts — 

“Please, you came here from Boston in the worst weather I’ve seen in years. You’re clearly mad, but I wasn’t going to make you sleep on the floor.” Flint interrupts before he can finish whatever he was about to say.

John Silver might be skilled with words, but years as captain of the Walrus crew made Flint _excel_ at deflecting dangerous conversations. Normally his quartermaster wouldn’t let him get away with it — but Silver is weakened, and walking on unknown terrain. He just stares at Flint with a blank face.

Flint gestures in the general direction of the kitchen. “Help yourself to some food,” he says, in the same tone he used to say _open the gun ports_.

He goes back to his book and reads half a chapter while Silver eats, careful not to let his eyes leave the page. He can feel the weight of the man’s stare on the side of his face as clearly as he could feel the air getting heavy before a storm at sea.

“Do you want me to leave ?” Silver asks abruptly. He seems surprised by his own words, as if they had been punched out of him by some unknown enemy.

Flint takes a long, burning sip of whisky and stares at the ceiling. “There is no simple answer to that,” he says.

 

_I wish you had never come at all_

_I wish I had killed you that night in the wrecks_

 

_I wish you had followed me to see the end of this war_

 

He can almost feel the wound on his temple, the shorn hair on his head, and the treacherous wind of Skeleton Island. He remembers the gun recoiling in his hand, hot and slippery, as he shot the last man who stayed loyal to him just to keep John Silver alive.

He remembers slaughtering men he recruited himself.

Silver keeps staring at him.

“I want you to be honest with me,” Flint finally says, and it is all he is willing to concede right now.

 

* * *

 

They both get very drunk on whisky that night.

It’s not quite joyful, and they do not talk about anything of any consequence. At some point Silver starts rummaging through his books and dramatically acting out entire paragraphs. Flint has to grab him by the neck to wrestle a well-worn copy of _Antigone_ away from him before he can start reading from that too.

“Have you read this before,” he asks, words slurring lazily in the warm air.

“Do you take me for a scholar ? Of course not.”

“...Good. Let’s… keep it that way,” he says, exhausted, reaching unsteadily for the wall behind him and sliding down until he can sit on the floor. “Let’s keep it that way.”

 

* * *

 

He does not remember falling asleep, or even closing his eyes ; when he wakes up the next day the sun is still low in the sky, Silver is nowhere to be seen, and _Antigone_ is still resting half-open in his lap. He stumbles outside to rub some snow on his face — it stings, and the light makes his eyes water, but afterwards he feels fractionally more human.

Silver clears his throat from somewhere behind his shoulder. Flint wipes the water from his mouth with the back of his hand and half-turns to look at him.

He has evidently made use of Flint’s razor while he was asleep ; his beard is trimmed, his moustache a little neater, and his hair a little shorter, if unevenly cut.

“I sliced some bread, and I found some honey in your pantry ?” Silver says, hesitant.

“Do you want me to show you why I came here ?” Flint asks.

A stunned silence, and the sounds of day-old snow melting in lazy droplets falling from the roof, then :

“I don’t have anywhere to be today, I suppose.”

Oh, how Flint missed the dry humour in that voice.

“It’s quite the journey,” he says, eyeing the crutch.

 

Silver shrugs and walks back inside.

“If you don’t want any of that bread, by all means stay where you are,” he calls out, and Flint scrambles to his feet.

 

* * *

 

They only set out in the middle of the afternoon, after Flint comes back empty-handed from the river. He had hoped to get a couple fish at least to put in salt, but the only trout he managed to hook had gotten away from him after a short fight and he hadn’t had the energy to try any longer.

After he has decked out both of them in wool and leather and proper boots, Flint leads them north between the trees. His rifle hangs lightly on his shoulder. He gave the knife to Silver, just in case, but he does not think any animal will try to bother them in bright daylight.

He is content to walk slowly, stopping here and there to point something out to Silver — fox tracks ;  the small hidden huts in the tree his closest neighbour uses in the spring to ambush deer ; the thorny bushes where he usually finds the darkest berries.

Silver does not say much. After an hour or so he gets a bit flustered by the effort, but he assures Flint he is fine, and they continue on.  
They help each other up a narrow path on the flank of the mountain. It winds and twists, but it faces south and is almost clear of snow. Silver steadies himself on his shoulder, close and out of breath, when they reach the top.

  
“Oh, I see,” he says, when he finally looks to the east.

  
They are on top of a rocky hill, the sun barely cresting the mountains on the horizon. It paints the valleys below them in rich bronze and golds, encased in the gleaming white of the snow and the emerald of the trees.

The wind is crisp but gentle. The sun pleasantly warm on their faces. There are a few trails of smoke from villages far, far away in the distance. Flint can see a hawk circling patiently over an invisible prey, its wings wide and immobile, a few miles from them.

They sit down on a patch of dry grass and remove their coats to cool down for a moment. Flint remains quiet, looking at the endless forest, while Silver rubs at his leg with obvious relief.

They share some watered-down whisky he brought with him in a flask.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you happy, here ?” Silver asks, after a long while.

Flint runs his knuckles under his jaw absently.

“More so than I’ve been in a very long time, at any rate,” he replies. There is something earnest in Silver’s eyes that demands further elaboration, so he continues.

“I have no desire to hurt anyone again, yet sometimes…” He sighs in frustration, not finding the right words. Silver seems content to lean back in the sun without interrupting, and Flint appreciates the space he is being given to assemble his thoughts.

“Sometimes… I feel I should still be out there, fighting in some way or the other.”

“Fighting what ?”

“...Everything ?” he replies with a small, self-conscious laugh that surprises even himself. Silver leans up on one elbow and eyes him curiously, the hint of a smile dancing at the corner of his mouth.

“...but mostly England?”

“But mostly England.”

And Silver is openly laughing at that, throwing his head back and covering his eyes with an arm. Flint joins him, his heart feeling a little lighter. When they’re quiet again, Silver looks up at him from behind the hand still covering his face. He looks absurdly young.  
  
“What,” Flint asks.

“Well, it’s only natural. You’re living with notorious spy and traitor to the Crown Thomas Hamilton, after all.”

Flint groans. “Thomas is not a spy.”

“Say what you will. Between his little illicit literary-club in Boston and his constant dealings with the governor at Fort Frontenac, I’m not sure which is more incriminating."  
  
“Thomas is a legitimate businessman with varied interests in all the possibilities the New World has to offer,” Flint says evenly, and to his credit he almost succeeds at keeping a straight face.  
  
“And I’m the fucking King of Spain.” Silver replies without missing a beat.  
  
Flint tries, very badly, not to start laughing again. The sun gets in his eye.  
  
They stay silent for a long while.  
  
“You worry about him.”  
  
Flint’s eyes close against his will.  
  
“I trust him,” he corrects.

  
  
And he does, of course, trust Thomas to stay safe. To stay alive ; to come back to him whole every time. Still.

Every day he watches the sun set, alone in the stillness of the woods, and wonders if the next day is the one the hollow ache beneath his ribs will eventually be too much — the day he takes up his rifle, and his knife, and the few scattered threads of his sanity, and marches through the land until he can tail Thomas anywhere he goes like an ever-watching shadow.  
  
“I think you deserve some rest,” Silver says.

Flint is not sure what he means exactly by that, and it must show, because Silver goes on.  
  
“You have given enough of yourself. Let people return the favour.”

  
  
And it’s rich, really, coming from John Silver, ever-changing outline of a man, who has worn as many faces as there were people who needed him ; who has filled his body with as many purposes as he had allies ; who has reshaped and bent himself into as many roles as Flint, or Madi, or their men asked of him ; who sacrificed his flesh, and his ambitions, and his entire previous state of being for the crew.  
  
Coming from John Silver, who was crowned King, and discarded his most glorious victory and the trust of those closest to him so he could keep them _safe_. Coming from this man, who now has little left but his name and the breath in his lungs, and who came so far into the lonely wild to lay all of it down at Flint’s feet.

His throat suddenly feels too tight — the sun too blinding. He wants to look away from Silver but finds he can’t.

There it is, again — his most formidable enemy. A thieving, lying man presenting him with the most honest truth in the world.

Silver’s face softens, and he reaches to lay a hand on Flint’s arm to break him out of his stupor.

 

Flint lets himself be defeated. There was a war, and a perpetual storm, and too many lonely islands, but that was before — he has reached the end of the mountain pass and walked onto the other side.

He grips Silver’s hand in his like it’s made of embers and he’s a man lost in a blizzard.

 

“...And what would Thomas think of this,” Silver asks very quietly, although there is a hint of playfulness in his voice that makes Flint’s lungs ache.

“Much the same as what Madi would think of this, I’d imagine.”

Dust dances in the golden light. The wind carries the sharp scent of the pines.

 

Silver is silent for a while, contemplating something. He rubs absently at the back of his neck. “Do you think they —”

“I can’t be sure, but we certainly didn’t get here by ourselves, did we.”

He gets punched in the shoulder for that, but it was half-hearted, with no malice in it. He still hasn’t let go of Silver’s hand.

“Did I really break your neck, in those dreams of yours ?”

Silver lets out a low, surprised sound. He turns his hand, slightly, and runs his thumb over the bones of Flint’s wrist.  
  
“You did,” he says simply.  
  
“As an angel ?” Flint presses, unable to keep the curiosity out of his voice.  
  
“One of the frightening ones, with too many eyes and wings and claws.”

“And how did I go about it ?”

Silver’s fingers still, and Flint suddenly notices that he is not so much holding his hand as Silver is clinging to his arm. They look at each other — Silver’s eyes are immense and honest.

Flint remembers another forest.

  
“Very carefully.”

  
There is something of a challenge at the corner of Silver’s mouth, so Flint grabs him by the back of his neck and kisses him — soft, and slow, and all-consuming.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Truthful Man

Silver is burning. Flint is kissing him, and he is burning.

There is no fight, no violence, no harsh retribution — only Flint’s hands on the back of his neck, and the chill of the wind.

Silver wants — needs to rage against it. To throw himself into battle. To find an enemy there.

He thought he came here for this — a final stand, a hard-won defeat. He needed to confess, to be judged, to bow his head and accept a bitter resolution. But here. Now. In the reverent press of Flint’s lips. In the mute adoration written plainly on the arch of his brows. In the hesitation of his fingers against Silver’s skin — there is none of that.

In all of this, Silver can find no more finality than in the centuries upon centuries of dark earth they are sitting on.

And Flint lets him go — slowly, carefully, with a small gasp that would break any lesser man.  
John Silver is not just any man. He is stronger, harsher, more deceitful than any man. He is weaker than any man.

There is a stray eyelash clinging to Flint’s cheekbone.

Sometimes, we have to be overwhelmed by the smallest thing for a world of possibility to suddenly be revealed to us.

Silver grasps for words, for one of his tricks, for an easy smile. He finds that everything has abandoned him. Everything has abandoned him and yet, strangely, nothing has ended.

Flint has not moved away from him. He does not look angry, or offended, or even sad ; he looks like himself. Himself. A person that Silver knows, intimately, for all he has only seen him for only a few furtive moments over the years. Not quite the single-minded captain, mindless of the blood dripping from his teeth in his search for revenge. Not quite the young idealistic lieutenant he had painted himself as, in the stories he has told Silver about his past.

Someone completely different and yet encompassing both of them, someone Silver has seen, so many times, without fully recognising him — woven into the shadows of every step he took and everything he did. Someone Silver has longed for — burned for. Killed for. Someone he has bared his soul to ; in letters he never sent. In prayers he never said aloud.

And he does not know — Silver does not know and it drives him mad — how to reciprocate. How to be like him, a completely honest shape of a man ; who lives and walks in the present as well as the past ; and who goes on bearing the burden of every person he has ever been with such grace.

Silver does not know how to shape himself into a truthful man.

But Flint — McGraw, the Captain, _James_ — deserves only that, and nothing less. A truthful man.

Silver tried, before, when he had needed the sharpest blade he could invent to separate himself from the man and feel justified in doing so — he tried to paint him as something other than just a man. Something akin to Hercules gone mad with grief ; a fallen hero who had to be stopped. That had worked, for a time. He tried to think of himself as the benevolent hand that reached into the past and found an innocent man waiting to step back into the light — a man unmarked and untainted by the horrors Silver had been complicit of.

A man who never knew Silver, and consequently never needed to truly _know_ him.

But the past never stays past for things that live and breathe, and dichotomy only works in the abstract, and the blade was too dull to cut between their shared mind.

Silver knows he is a fool.

Flint raises a hand to wipe at the tears forming at the corner of his eyes. The touch punches a sob out of Silver’s chest, so fleeting and scalding it is.

“I need…,” he starts, not knowing if he will ever find an end to that sentence.

He is not someone who needs — rarely ever allowed himself to be. He is someone who is needed ; he his someone who takes. This — this is new. He grips Flint’s shoulder, trying to keep his head out of the water. Flint is solid, and still, and steady. Silver wants this moment encased in amber ; forever golden, forever clear.

So he leans in and brushes his lips against the corner of Flint’s mouth, as if he could ever be deserving of it — as if he could ever be deserving of more. And Flint catches him, bleeding heart that he is — holds him and sucks on his lower lip and devours him whole.

Silver whimpers and clings to him. He feels closer to God. He feels closer to the truth.

They part.

“We should head back before it gets too dark,” Flint says.

Silver nods, incapable of something so complex and treacherous as speaking ; but he is thankful for Flint’s hand pressed lightly against his breastbone, as if he knew that only Silver’s lungs could speak for him.

 

* * *

 

 

The way back is easier, almost all of it downhill, and even though he is feeling tired and sore from the climb it seems to fly past him. Neither of them talks, but Flint keeps a hand on him all the way. In another time Silver would have bristled at it, found it patronising ; but he suspects that it’s meant to steady Flint himself more than him, and that he does not mind conceding.

By the time they make it to the cabin they can barely see where they are going, the night seeming to close in on them like a heavy curtain.  Once the door is shut behind them Silver falls into the nearest chair, and decides that he is never leaving it again.

Flint shrugs off his rifle and hangs it in place, then goes to stoke the fire back to life, and lights a few candles around the room. The warmth and the light hit Silver in waves, pushing and pulling at him, as if he were stuck and drifting between two worlds.

He sees Flint stripping out of his coat and does the same, albeit much more slowly and with much more effort. When Flint takes the coat from him Silver almost catches his hand.

 _Touch me again_ , he wants to say. _Talk to me again_.

It’s a hard thing, asking plainly for what you need. So he does not.

He decides that he will not pass out in front of the fire again while Flint cooks him dinner like a fucking housewife, so he stands abruptly, grabs his crutch and a lit candle from the table, and walks into the next room to wash.  
Perhaps he closes the door a little too loudly, or perhaps Flint had actually wanted to talk to him ; but before long there is his voice, sharp and clear from the other side of the door.

“Are you alright ?”

Silver leans on the edge of the tub, halfway through removing his shirt. Is he ?

“Yes, just...tired,” he calls back lamely. Tongue of fucking silver, uh.

It seems to be enough, though, and he hears Flint’s footsteps retreating. He goes back to washing. His foot hurts like it rarely did before, and the cool wet cloth feels like a heavenly blessing on his skin.

 

* * *

 

 

When he does not come out soon enough for Flint’s taste, apparently, Silver hears a firm knock on the door. He hums absently in response.

Flint opens the door and finds him standing by the windowsill, staring at the rings he left there.

“I had forgotten about those,” he says - half to himself and half aloud.

And he had.  
He has barely been there two days, and already the rings he once wore for months at a time only look like small, useless lumps of metal. Silver is not sure what Flint understands, or what he thinks — but suddenly he his grasping Silver’s hand and bringing it to his mouth to press a kiss to his knuckles.

Where their previous kiss was unhurried this one is urgent, and there is something akin to a fever in Flint’s eyes.

Silver feels ready to collapse under the weight of it.

It may have been the safety of the night around them, barely disturbed by the light of the candles and the moon, that lured a creature out of a lair it did not dare to leave in the daylight — or it may have been Silver’s silence, that betrayed his unsteady mind and demanded actions rather than words.  
Either way, Flint holds his hand and kisses the pale marks the rings have left on Silver’s skin.

“Please, I don’t…”

He trails off. _I don’t know how to accept this._

_I don’t know who you think I am._

_I don’t know who you want me to be._

“It drives me mad when you don’t finish what you mean to say,” Flint’s voice cuts through the fog, low and rumbling. There is something of a reproach, a flash of danger — but it is wrapped in such simple warmth that Silver is drawn to it rather than away.

“I’m sorry…”

“Yes, just like that,” Flint says, and lets out a laugh that sounds more frustrated than joyful.

He turns, blowing out the candle, and tugs Silver into the main room and towards the table.

Silver recalls that he is starving.

 

* * *

 

Halfway through dinner, he stops eating.

Flint may be content with the way he has been destroying him —  slowly, with scalding touches and eternities of silence — but there is a part of himself that still remembers that he was Long John Silver ; a part of himself that yearns for a fight with a clear plan and a battlefield to his advantage.

“What is it ?” Flint asks.

Silver squares his jaw.

“I have no right to be here,” he says.

Flint drops his knife and eyes him like an old wolf assessing a prey.

“This isn’t a matter of rights.”

“It is. I can’t take this away from you.”  
  
“And what exactly do you think you are taking away from me ?”  
  
“Your life here. With Thomas. Who you are now —  your peace. I am not part of that.”

“My _peace_ ?!” Flint stands, raising his voice, his arms braced on the edge of the table. Where Silver expects cold fury, his face is more open than he has ever seen ; painted with anger and disarming grief.

“What made you think I was at peace ? Did you not see, did you not understand why I stay here ? Why do you assume that who I am now is any less dangerous than _Flint_ ?”

“I only wanted to _give it to you,_ ” Silver protests, but this is a storm he had not predicted, and for all he wants to resist it he find himself powerless.

Flint has moved away from the table. He stands, silhouetted by the light of the fire, his hands restless at his sides. A vision from a dream comes back to Silver — a burning man, standing high on a hill far, too far away ; inaccessible and unable to hear him.

And Silver’s hands, wreathed in flames that he cannot feel.

That is one dream he never wrote about in his letters — it seemed too real, too intimate, too revealing ; more unspeakable even than the holy memory of Flint’s clawed hands seizing his neck and snapping his spinal cord.

Flint’s voice is closer to a whisper now, and still it holds Silver in place more effectively than any yelled order ever did.

“No, you took peace away from me long ago. With your words, and your lies, and your fucking faith in me. You took it away when you forced me to kill my own men.”

There is no letter from Thomas Hamilton that he could brandish to defend himself this time.

“You took it away when you invited yourself into my mind. You wanted to be _me_ , John Silver ? Tell me, how does it _feel_ ?”

And the sound of his first name spoken with such bitterness shocks Silver into action before he can think. He jolts out of his chair, scrambling to stand eye to eye with the man. Even so he feels at a disadvantage and the night, the closed doors, the food on the table and the quiet fire all feel part of one same, terrible trap.

“It is as I told you,” he says. “I have no right to be here.”

Flint looks at him, his eyes wild, a tremor pulling at the skin over his cheekbone.

“You _fractured_ me. You don’t get to walk away without picking up the fucking pieces.”

Silver takes a step forward, and he is incapable of removing the provocation from his voice. “Is that how it is ? I thought I had nothing to fear from you.”

“You don’t.”

“Don’t fucking play with me,” he growls, catching the front of Flint’s shirt and shoving at him.  

Flint grabs at his shirt, too ; he struggles for a second before his back hits the wall.

His breath feels hot on Silver’s cheek, and it undoes everything.

“Don’t fucking play with me,” Silver repeats — only this time it is no threat but a plea ; the last desperate cry of a drowning man.

“Don’t fucking play with me,” he says again, broken and fervent, against Flint’s lips.

Flint’s hands are in his hair, and his teeth catch on his lip, and the ocean washes away his broken bones, and Silver burns at last with the man on the hill.

This is as good a surrender as he can give.

He reaches blindly for Flint’s throat — this is not enough, he needs to feel his pulse with his own skin, to taste it, to imprint its rhythm on the back of his own skull so he can at least take that with him when he finally finds his way into Hell.

There’s a sharp thud as the back of Flint’s head collides with the wall.

Flint moans into his mouth, swallows hard against Silver’s splayed hand.

Power over this man is not something Silver thought he had anymore. Trust, even less. But Flint runs his fingers along his spine, pressing down hard between his vertebrae, and arches against him, and pulls at the fabric of his shirt, and still does nothing to remove Silver’s hand from his throat.

Silver still has no plan on how to make up for his sins — but he supposes it could start like this.

They part.

Flint stares at him, pupils blown wide. His fingers still between Silver’s shoulder blades.

He knows he was a fool — to come here thinking he was the only one who had been starved.

“I am not. Playing.”

Flint’s voice is fucking _steel_.

Silver blinks, tries to speak. Fails. Lets his hand fall to his side.

“Do you want this,” Flint asks at the same time that Silver says “Please…”

And then there are arms on him, around him, holding him up, wrenching him away from his own thoughts, dragging him over coals and across the threshold to the bedroom.

 

* * *

 

He sits on the edge of the mattress, lets his crutch drop to the floor, removes his boot. Flint lets go of him to do the same and to light a few candles on his desk ; and although the delay pains Silver he is grateful for it. He needs to see him.

The light reveals a few opened letters scattered on the desk. Flint pauses.

“So you had really forgotten what you wrote.”

Silver raises his chin. Caught red-handed, once again.

“Not a single word,” he says.

Flint is on him in an instant, straddling him, pulling his head back with a hand fisted in his hair and gentle fingers under his jaw, and kissing him again. Silver catches himself on his elbows. Their combined weight pulls painfully at his shoulders but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t mind — it barely registers.

He responds in kind, sucking at Flint’s bottom lip and catching it between his teeth, chasing after him when he moves, licking and biting and not conceding a fucking inch of air between them.

All of that turns out to be a masterful diversion when he feels the full weight of Flint’s hips against his in a long, slow, treacherous slide. A moan escapes him and he opens his eyes in time to see Flint bite back one himself.  Silver wants to retaliate but he is trapped in this position, unable to use his hands ; so he latches onto the side of Flint’s neck and bucks his hips once, hard, at the same time.

He can _feel_ more than he hears the broken sound Flint makes, the skin of his neck tensing against Silver’s teeth as he throws his head back.

Silver drinks it up.

He is hard, and starved, and fucking drunk on it.

Flint takes off his shirt in one smooth motion and Silver has to let go of his neck — he cannot see well in the dim light, but there is a darkening mark there that feels like a victory.

There is no time to savour it. Flint’s hands are back on him, lifting his shirt, digging into his ribs, pulling at his neck so he has to straighten up and shrug off the fabric.

Then he pushes Silver down, pinning him flat on his back with all his weight and an arm across his chest, and Silver cannot concentrate on the way they fit together because Flint’s voice is suddenly right by his ear ; hoarse but impossibly steady.

“You need to calm down.”

“Why should I ?”

Flint’s lips brush against his temple. His voice softens.

“Because I want this to last, and I want you present and in control.”

Silver exhales. Turns his head away and rubs hard at his eyes. He feels lost. He feels overwhelmed. He thought he could do this without falling apart.

Flint releases him and lets him drag himself further away on the mattress. He settles down and tries to focus on — anything.

There are stripes of moonlight across the ceiling, very pale, and the blurred shadows of tree branches. There is a faint draft from the window, icy on his skin. There is the wind scraping at the roof, and the soft creaking of the wooden walls.

There is Flint’s hand resting over his heart.

“You did nothing wrong.”

 

* * *

 

 

The tips of Flint’s fingers against the hollow of his eyes. Quiet and searing. His thumb ghosting over the corner of his lips.

Silver moves, ever so slightly, to mouth at the center of Flint’s palm, and Flint lets out a choked sound. Silver does not dare open his eyes. The moment feels too sacred.

“ _John—_ ”

And there is an accent of such pure fervour in his voice that Silver feels guilty for not responding properly, but he can’t — he has been struck, he has been vanquished, he has been unmade.

Molten lead flows in his veins instead of blood ; leaving him burnt, charred, and exposed. He raises a hand to take hold of Flint’s wrist, the back of his hand, the bones of his fingers — he holds him there to breathe against his skin and wills the world to stop shifting.

And Flint breathes with him, seeming to understand.

“John, I’ve got you — I’ve got you —  listen to me.”

It’s such an easy surrender. It’s a revelation. The weight of Flint’s chest against his. The hard feel of his ribcage and the rough edges of his scars under his hands. The impossible warmth of him, of his breath, of his lips at the edge of Silver’s jaw.

“I don’t want you to walk away. John, you were so fucking _brave —”_

Flint’s _voice_. The low, urgent rasp of his words has Silver keening, blinking back tears, and he feels small and weak. He could listen to him for days on end, but he has to show him, he has to — give.

He sits up and fumbles with the fabric of Flint’s breeches for a brief, frustrating moment, but the shock of their foreheads colliding when he takes him in hand is worth all the holy unctions Silver could ever receive.  
He runs his free hand through Flint’s hair, stops at the nape of his neck, where the ends of the copper strands brush against pale skin. It is such a small, vulnerable part of him — and it has been driving Silver wild for longer than he can remember. Then he starts stroking his cock, languid and steady, and Flint is panting in his mouth, and Silver feels sure of himself again.

It turns into a two-way fight, Flint arching over him and fucking into his fist with practised restraint, and Silver trying to bring him closer to him, closer to where he wants him — reaching and reaching and reaching.

It’s sweat, and warm skin, and sharp moans, and the rough fabric of the blanket against his back. He has no notion of how long it lasts.

Flint stills after a while, and looks down at Silver with half-lidded eyes.

“Let me,” Silver starts, but he is silenced by Flint’s fingers against his mouth.

He stares up at him, entranced, as his thumb presses down and parts his lips - as it reaches inside and runs lightly over the edge of his teeth.  
He feels his body shaking, in the most delicious way.

He lets himself be tamed — bites down very gently on Flint’s thumb and opens his mouth again to let him slip two more fingers inside. He licks at them, yields as they press down on his tongue and caress the roof of his mouth ;  almost cries out with want when Flint runs them over his teeth again.

Flint is watching him, half hidden in shadows, the warmest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. His hair is falling over his face, and he looks more regal like this than any king Silver has ever heard of.

“Does this compare to your dreams,” Flint asks, barely concealing the amusement in his voice — and in another life Silver would bite back with a snarl, but he knows he is not being ridiculed here, only taken care of.

He does not answer, but he closes his eyes and swallows around Flint’s fingers.

Greediness will be his downfall, he knows — and in a sense it already has been, he thinks as Flint pushes him down again and moves away from him to remove his breeches entirely. Silver has a few precious seconds to catch his breath before being kissed again, with a razor-sharp intent that almost distracts him from Flint’s hands undressing him too.

Then Flint is biting at his jaw, his teeth slotted to the underside of his bone, pushing Silver's head back and baring his neck.

_Ah._

He has rather shown his hand earlier, it seems.

Flint’s fingers are back on Silver’s lips, teasing him, brushing over his teeth and denying him the satisfaction of going any further, while Flint licks his way down to the hollow of his throat, across his clavicle, and down to his nipples.

Silver whimpers and jerks against him — it earns him a stinging bite on the side of his ribs, followed by Flint’s tongue, soothing and hot over his tender skin.

When Flint moves to mouth at the jut of his hipbone, holding his waist with both hands,  Silver tangles his fingers into his hair and stops holding his moans.

He feels the man smile against him.

He takes his time, nipping at his thighs and caressing the underside of his knees, and how he expects Silver to _last_ after all of this is beyond him.

“ _Please_ , _James_ …”

Then Flint’s mouth is on his cock, slow and sure — he runs his tongue along its length, tasting, testing him — and the obscene wet sounds he makes are a torture and a blessing all at once.

He loses all sense of restraint ; how could he not, with Flint’s nails digging into his thighs while he swallows his cock, with Flint’s mouth hot and slick, with Flint’s neck moving under his fingers, with his own lungs collapsing and betraying him.

Ever the show-off, Flint drives him to the edge of what his body can take, then drags him back into his bones like a tide — and then he does it again, and again, licking and sucking and releasing him — before he lets go of his hips and allows Silver to finally, tentatively fuck into his face.

It’s a mistake. He is too close already, and although the image of Flint’s face dripping with come haunts his mind this is not what he needs right now. He stops moving and pulls at Flint’s hair, gently, to bring him back.

“Come here, _please_ , come here—”

Flint complies, pliant under his hand, and Silver kisses him, revelling in the feel of his chin slick with spit and come.

He runs a hand down Flint’s spine and flips them over, twisting until he finds a comfortable position ; finally getting the upper hand. Flint stares up at him with open wonder. He’s flushed, and covered in sweat, and breathless. He’s a mess.

Silver tucks a few strands of hair behind his ear and presses a kiss under his eye.

Then he grounds his hips against him and Flint has to brace himself on his elbows not to collapse.

“Yes, more of this, _John, you’re_ — fuck— ”

His hand flies to Silver’s back, nails scraping between his shoulder blades as he moves with him. The friction is intoxicating, and Silver hopes it’s enough for both of them because he is too far gone to do anything else now —  he needs it like this ; close and frantic and messy and intimate, Flint’s fingers around his cock, Flint’s lips on his shoulder, Flint’s blood on his tongue.

Flint comes with a cry, muffled into his shoulder, but he keeps stroking Silver and drags him into a savage kiss that sends him over the edge.

“Let me hear you,” Flint pleads, and his voice is so raw that it leaves Silver shaking and crying out as he flies apart.

Flint holds him through it, smoothing his hands over his spine, pressing warm lips to his temples, to his brow, to the corner of his mouth. Silver catches himself before he collapses, buries his face in the curve of Flint’s neck, and tries to slow his own breathing.

There is a faint cold draft from the window, a gentle hand in his hair, warm legs around his, and a woolen blanket sliding over his back.

He still does not find any finality there.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> r a t i n g c h a n g e


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Interlude

There is a sudden burst of pain in Flint’s shoulder. He opens his eyes.

The sun shines high above him, and he can feel the skin of his face start to burn — he has been away from the open water for too long, away from the open sky, hidden in the shadows of trees and mountains, and his skin had grown pale again.

Sand under his bare feet. An endless beach. No water to be seen, no sound to be heard. Flint stands there and tries to remember where he was before.

He stands there, and a child comes to him.

 

* * *

 

The child is too young and round-faced for him to know if they’re a boy or a girl. Five or six, at most. A head of wild, dark hair. A trusting smile.

The child’s eyes are a strange, unnatural colour — pale and shifting like mother of pearl.

Flint stands there and the child starts talking, in a voice full of jagged edges and misshapen vowels, as if multiple people were reciting the same words at slightly different speeds. The effect is strangely melodious, even if the rhythm is off ; and it pulls at Flint’s mind like an old piece of music he might have heard when he was young.

 _“No one shall bury him_ ,” the child says, “ _No one mourn for him, but this body must lie in the fields, a sweet treasure for carrion birds to find as they search for food_.”

A shiver runs up Flint’s spine.

He turns around, looking for the body the child is speaking of — for it seems urgent in that moment that he should find it. Find it, carry it to the ship, cover it in cloth torn from her sails, and let it sink into the silence of the ocean.

There is no time to get a body back to the ship, he realises suddenly. How soon after death do souls depart ? Do they linger for a while in the shadows of still-warm corpses ?  
He thinks a land burial could be sufficient — the stillness of damp earth should be as peaceful as the dark depths of the sea, after all — but it has been so long since he has been to one. He wonders if he would even recall the rites. The words he could make up on the spot, and maybe that would be enough.

 

* * *

  
  
Flint turns and turns but there is no body to be found.

The child slips a small hand in his own and looks up at him, eyes liquid and ever-changing. Grey to white. White to grey. Grey to white.

“S _ea-wanderer, forest-visitor,_ ” the child says in the same strange voice.

“Wait, I know this,” Flint starts, but the child continues : “ _Even the pure Immortals cannot escape you, and mortal man, in his one day’s dusk_ —”

“ — trembles before your glory,” Flint finishes.

He can see the ocean on the horizon now. Pale sand. The sun glinting off the crest of the waves.

The child is gone.

Flint is holding a book.

When he opens it he recognises the words, of course — he could quote entire verses from memory — but there is something more. In the middle of it, neatly folded between two pages. A letter.  
  
Written in John Silver’s hand.

And Flint has read all of Silver’s letters so many times that he knows them by heart — the words, the desperate truth half-hidden between the lines, the stains and the faint discolourations of the paper that makes each of them unique.

He knows them, intimately. They used to be all he had left of the man who wrote them.

This one, he is sure, he has never read.

Yet for it to be hidden in this book, he must have had it for a very long time. Why has he never read it ? That does not make any sense to him.

There is a gentle hand pressed against his shoulder.  
  
Flint wakes up.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one, and I apologise - I did miss writing dreams.


End file.
